Helping Our Children Find Their Calling, Part 2

The training of our children includes their whole being: spiritual, character, physical, and mental/academic. The spiritual aspect of our children's lives is paramount. If this aspect of their training is missing, the others don't matter much. A successful man without Christ is little different from a poor man without Christ. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul? (Matt. 8:36)

This spiritual training must begin early and continue as long as you have any influence in your children’s lives. The three broad areas to be addressed are:
1) Who God is.
2) Who the child is.
3) What to do about 1 and 2.

More specifically,
1) God is the holy, All Powerful, Creator and King of the universe. Everything rests in His hands.
2) Your children are created in God’s image but born in the sin that they inherited from you.
3) They are to respond to God with repentance and faith that comes from God and walk in good works that He has prepared for them to do.

A related aspect to training our children’s spirit is training their character. We want our children to be courageous, hard working, honest, merciful, faithful, and many of the other traits taught throughout scripture but especially in the book of Proverbs. These fruits are vital to seeing them fulfilling their callings.

The second area to consider when helping a child work through his calling is his personality and gifting. This is more discovered than developed. We need to understand how God has put this child together. We can direct him in his use of his personality and gifts after we know what they are. For example, is your child a “people person?” You can teach him to use that to improve others instead of making himself the center of attention. Perhaps we can direct this people person into managing others or helping people to find solutions they are looking for. Perhaps he is good at math and can think in concepts and images instead of words. Some form of engineering might be a path for this child.

To do this work of matching personality and gifts with a career, we need to become familiar with a variety of jobs and note what those who are successful in them are like. I remember years ago standing in my oldest son’s closet and realizing it looked just like Tim Quiring's garage. (Not a pretty picture.) Tim Q. was a founding elder of CGS and an EE (electrical engineer). Andrew is now getting his PhD in EE. There are often personality features common to those who practice a particular profession. Electrical engineers tend to have many hobbies and collect “stuff” from their varied interests such as rebuilding old motorcycles, computers, or stereos. An interest in model trains is also common for engineer types. We haven’t seen as obvious hints with our second and third children, but even with them we’ve noticed clues.

When we have an idea of the general direction a young person should go, we need to tailor his education to match. This is easiest when the child is home schooled, but it should always be done regardless of the type of school the child attends. Is the child bound for the hard sciences or engineering? Then he needs calculus before he graduates from high school. Is he gifted with computers? Make sure he takes some programming classes or learns thatin some other arena. Is she bound for nursing? She needs to take anatomy. Not only academic work needs to be matched with possible career training. We need to give our young people opportunities to be around people doing the calling he is considering. Can he volunteer at the hospital, radio station, church? Can he get a part time job at the restaurant or the construction site? The more experience and knowledge the child has, the better the direction will be. While doing career exploration volunteer or paid work, your son or daughter will get an idea whether this is indeed the correct direction for him.

It is both exciting and intimidating to help our children find their calling. Can God lead them without us? Of course! But what a joy to stand alongside our children as we look to their future together.